


your frozen hands are so much like mine but they don’t compromise

by literaryladytype



Category: Lumberjanes
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, and they were bunkmates, i think, we love Diane but also it’s hard being friends with her when you have RSD, you know when you’re a touchstarved lesbian in quarantine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25315858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryladytype/pseuds/literaryladytype
Summary: Molly and Diane have been getting pretty close until Molly shows her her Greek Mythology fanfic and Diane makes fun of it a bit bc she has her own family and identity issues going on and Molly ends up really really internalizing it as she should be going to sleep, and Mal is on the bottom bunk trying to comfort her.Takes place whenever you want it too, honestly. Definitely sometime after the first Lost world arc.(Title is from Robert Frost by Mal Blum)
Relationships: Mal/Molly (Lumberjanes), Molly & Diane (Lumberjanes)
Kudos: 12





	your frozen hands are so much like mine but they don’t compromise

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for self harm mention but no actual act, major anxiety/RSD and self hate, also it’s very very dark bc they’re in the woods so i talk about that a bunch

Sometimes Diane is an amazing friend. Sometimes Molly feels like her presence just lights her up, inside and out, her teasing and Molly’s awkward teasing back is a comfort when every word you say to everyone else is so calculated, so filtered, so...

Molly is tired of herself sometimes. 

Tired that she thought she was strong enough for a new friendship like this, tired that it hurts so much after just a couple strings of words, maybe five, and a glance she keeps replaying and replaying and replaying in her head, she doesn’t want to be that girl.

This girl.

Whatever.

She’s tired that she thought she was made of the same light at the pantheon’s hearth, tired of her hopefulness that comes with daily archery practices at dawn and the zing and comfort of inside jokes and dizzyingly faster banter, almost indecipherable to anyone else. But then:

Icarus.

Wings.

She’s tired of having a heart that hurts this much, that stretches everything bad people say into painfully bright technicolor. 

“Mol,”Mal asks softly, “you still up?”

“Y-yeah,” Molly whispers back. It’s pitch black in the Roanoke cabin, stars just barely peeking through the window and Molly automatically squints to find constellations, and then winces at the impulse and digs herself back into her sheet. 

Luckily for them, everyone else sleeps deeply. Or pretends to, and hears Molly and Mal rambling to each other almost every night, and that’s a terrifying possibility Molly tries to block out. 

She’s tired, and the other thoughts tangle incoherently in her head and it’s so much easier to focus on Mal’s voice. 

“You didn’t talk much at dinner,” Mal says, like it’s a question, but it’s not.

Sometimes it hurts having someone this close, someone who notices everything. Molly feels a wave of guilt crash over her for even thinking that, realizes she’s been too quiet and then rushes to respond.

“Yeah no, um, not really.”

There’s a long, long, anxious pause. 

“Can I come up there?” Mal asks, and Molly immediately feels the warmth of a blush on her cheeks.

“It’s- it’s really dark, I- you could hurt yourself trying to climb.”

“I thought you said I was brave, huh?”

It’s a joke, Molly knows it’s a joke, that Mal doesn’t mean it but...

“Mol. I would like to come up. If you’re comfy with it.”

“And I would like a girlfriend with all her limbs intact,”Molly says, her words gone wobbly, tears starting to catch in her eyelashes.

“Well I. Would like to comfort my girlfriend, and hopefully hold her hand, and that ladder is pretty stable and... this is not the first time we’ve done this, babe.”

“Okay,” Molly relents, heart twisting and twisting with the other girl’s words. She needs to stop being so sensitive, she needs to let this go, she needs-

There’s a Mal-sounding creak on the other side of her bunk.

“Wow, yeah it really is dark out here,”Mal says quietly. “It’s never complete darkness in the city. You don’t think about that until you’re forced to, I guess. Spooky.”

“Comforting.”

“Sometimes, yeah.”

“You said hopefully we would...” Molly trails off, embarrassed by the non-question and the way her voice cracks with it.

“Oh,” Mal says in realization. “Yeah, hey, reach out your hand.”

Molly sits up and puts her hand in the void in front of her, feeling Mal’s wave around near it and then catching it and She thinks she’ll almost start crying again with how good it feels, but she just makes a little choked sound.

“Mol?”

“Do you ever wish you could take out your heart?” she says suddenly, their words interlapping.

“Molly,” Mal says back, her voice sounding so intently concerned it makes Molly curl up further in the dark.

“Not. It’s not about self harm. It’s a... metaphor. Do you wish you could... dial yourself back sometimes?”

“Yeah, me, of course. But never you.”

Molly doesn’t know how to begin with that, and the silence starts spooling around them again until Mal starts.

“Just... it’s like this. You still like me, right? Even though I don’t love the forest the way you do, and I’m always going to be terrified of the water and also a lot, a lot of other things, and even though I ramble to you constantly about bands you don’t care about.”

“Hey, I liked Mal Blum!”

“Junk yeah!! But still, like even though I do those things, you still-“

“It’s not even an “But I still like you.”” Molly interrupts, “I just like you. Those things are part of who you are.”

“Exactly,” Mal said, and Molly makes the sound of someone who had just walked into an obvious trap to make her feel better, and squeezes Mal’s hand.

“I’d never want you to take out your heart, Mol. I like you. So much, the whole person you are, and your feelings are so real and so valid. Someone who doesn’t understand that isn’t worth your time of day.”

“But it’s more complicated than that,” Molly starts and then stops, her point fuzzy with sleepiness.

“Sure. But it also sometimes it just isn’t.”

“Thank you.”

Molly squeezes her hand again.

“Anytime.”

“Whyareyousogreat”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. I just, uh. I really like you.”

“I really like you too,”Mal says, and Molly can picture the smile sprouting on her face, and it makes her feel a little lighter. 

She knows basically where Mal’s cheek is. 

She has an outline in her head.

She kisses it gently, and it smells like forest and the lemon face wash she uses and just Mal, and she lets it wash over her. 

Catalogues it in a library of memories in her head she wants to pull out later for when she’s not here.

For when she’s- 

“Oh,” Mal says.

“Was that okay?” Molly whispers.

“Yeah. I mean, of course. I mean- sweet Sappho.”

Molly doesn’t know how to respond to that, except start talking about Greek poets, which leads Mal to say a collection of words that are painfully familiar and has to-

“You’re quoting my fanfic?! Mal!!”

“I finally found it!”

“It took you weeks!”

“I had to use contraband phones! No one wants to share those! Unless you have an emergency and somehow according to Feryal “setting the world record for the most nerdy way to flirt with your girlfriend” is not that.”

“That sounds very hard,” Molly said, playing up the sympathy as her cheeks flushed so hard she was glad for the darkness.

“I know, it’s a miracle I survived. My presence, truly a gift from the gods.”

“Uh huh. All of that,” Molly affirms teasingly, a smile creeping up on her face.

There’s a quick silence and a worry takes her under again. What if she thinks about my writing like how Diane did???

“Did you... did you like it?”

“Are you kidding me? Of course I did! You’re the best writer, I’m always telling you! You’ve got to teach me that play on words you did with “ichor” and how you figured that out, I need something like that for the song for the talent show. And the way you described everything! You should write song lyrics! Or poetry.”

“Mal.”

“What?”

“You’re not messing with me?”

There was a silence and then Molly felt just a small breath of a kiss on her cheek, and tried to contain her little gasp.

“Never,” Mal replied, and it was dark, darker than any city kid could fathom, but it was theirs and they could feel each other’s wide smiles like twin spirits in the pitch black night.


End file.
